Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 220
Scan 220
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
12 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN DEALERS AND AMATEURS
3threatened with a subpoena, I replied, "I would certainly go into the box, but should have utterly to deny that I had vouched for the genuineness of the Red Knight or expressed any opinion whatever about it except that it was 'a good fiddle labelled Guarnerius,' worth perhaps £60 but not £300."
5The upshot was that I was not subpoenaed. Mr. Cox refunded the money and the buyer restored the fiddle.
7No one doubts but what Mr. Gillott, of steel-pen celebrity, did obtain, chiefly through Charles Reade of "Never Too Late to Mend" fame, a great many very fine fiddles, but I am afraid that Mr. C. Reade was also responsible for some comparative rubbish like the Red Knight. Certainly I find a very dubious Strad tenor (one of Gillott's) labelled 140 in the South Kensington collection. As to this particular collector's specimen, if I grant him his belly and his sound-holes, it is about all that I can do—for Strad never threw that scroll nor touched with plane or chisel that back and ribs.
9I brought home from Australia a so-called Peter Guarnerius—really an excellent violin—but it was no more a Guarnerius than a Strad, and was sold far under its value as a Camillo Camilli, which it probably was. But what will you? After all, a fiddle at any given time is worth what it will fetch.
11The most impudent fraud or the most blatant delusion which has ever come under my notice was the so-called Maggini exhibited by Mr. J. W. Joyce (110, South Kensington Exhibition, 1872).
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